Mental Health Awareness Week: What are we doing to make a change?

As we enter 2024, average sick days per employee are higher than they’ve been in over 30 years. 

With 5% of the UK currently on long-term sick leave, and with many of those cases attributed to stress and worsening mental health, the stats are pretty sobering. In fact, 91% of UK workers said they experienced extreme levels of pressure and stress at some point in 2023. On top of this, 25% of people said they experienced ill mental health during COVID-19.

This Mental Health Awareness Week, we’re shining a light on the mental wellbeing issue, and what we’re doing to make a change.

Why is there such a problem?

Mental wellbeing is a huge priority for both employers and employees, but just because it’s top of the agenda doesn’t mean the right moves are being made towards it. Wellbeing initiatives are being brought out and then discarded due to low engagement rates. Surface-level solutions may provide temporary fixes, but they’re certainly not a one-and-done item on the agenda.

One of the highest priorities for employees when choosing where to work is an employer that supports their wellbeing, and one of the priorities for HR professionals is to deal with the increasing wellbeing problem. Employers have the intention of spending money to solve the wellbeing problem, but it isn’t particularly working.

So, how are we combating the mental health and wellbeing crisis, without just throwing money at it?

Through volunteering, that’s how.

Where does volunteering come in?

Volunteering, and more specifically wellbeing volunteering, is instrumental towards mental wellbeing.

Volunteering doesn’t have to look like popping to your local charity shop to help out for a few hours every weekend. It doesn’t have to look like community gardening, or elderly assistance, or picking up prescriptions for a neighbour – although all of these are valid.

Instead, volunteering can look like this: pledging to yourself and to the people around you that you’re going to prioritise your wellbeing. It can be the simplest actions that you turn into habits. Perhaps you could pledge to shut down your devices over your lunch break and leave the office, rather than staring at screens when you should be switched off from work. Or maybe you want to block out time to wrestle with admin that’s been piling up, to ease the distraction you might have over it.

Truthfully, small actions like this can’t cure ill mental health. However, by pushing ourselves into building habits that better our brain, whether that’s by reducing distractions, tackling stress, or encouraging more happiness in our day-to-day lives, it’s certainly a start for the state of the nation’s wellbeing. Making a change has to start somewhere, and if that ‘somewhere’ is pledging to declutter a room in your house once a month, so be it.

When you instil in your people the belief that you care about their wellbeing, these beliefs are going to trickle down. Encouraging and prioritising employees taking time for themselves and their wellbeing is a key part of promoting productivity.

How can I prove that this works?

A study by Benefex found that just 20 minutes of exercise while sat at your desk will reduce your stress levels for the following two meetings that you go to, which means that you’ll contribute more and have a better experience. Likewise, just 20 minutes of journaling at the end of the working day can improve your productivity the following day by 20%, which is impactful and significantly more productive in the long-term.

Even outside of the context of workplace productivity, volunteering is proven to enhance our sense of belonging, reduce isolation, and prolong feelings of happiness and community. Boosting your bottom line is all well and good, but not at the expense of your employees’ mental health. 

For more insights into the nation’s wellbeing, particularly in the workplace, watch Gethin Nadin (award-winning psychologist and bestselling author), Charlie Allen (Run Social founder), and Sanjay Lobo (OnHand founder) discuss these very issues in OnHand’s impact webinar series here.

Interested in making a difference to your employees’ mental health? OnHand can help. Book a demo today.